Bigger is not better: a rant about lens manufacturers

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Merkin

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Is it just me, or do the vast majority of lenses just keep getting bigger and bigger? I was at my local used camera store a couple weeks ago, and I spotted a number of old lenses that I had never seen in the flesh before, and I was astounded at the small size, particularly some of the older leica and nikon rangefinder lenses, but the same applies to SLR lenses. Few would disagree that modern lenses, on average, are optically superior to the majority of lenses from not that long ago, with advances in lens design, materials, speed (or better quality at larger apertures), and coatings. At the same time though, they just keep getting larger and larger! Of course, there are a few exceptions. Pentax has done a good job with their pancake primes, and a lot of the voigtlander lenses are quite small. There is no reason in my mind, however, why the vast majority of lenses couldn't be made significantly smaller. Do people like only being able to carry half the equipment in the same amount of space? Is it just another case of a misguided "Bigger is better" philosophy? If nikon could make a non-collapsible rangefinder lens 50 years ago that barely stuck out from the body more than a cubic inch, there is absolutely no excuse for the sheer bulk of modern lenses.
 
They can, check out some of the point and shoot stuff, or the one in your mobile/cell phone… they’re just not manly enough to sell well
 
hans voralberg said:
There is actually, Autofocus, you have to put the gear (Nikon, Pentax) or the entire AF motor module (Canon) somewhere.
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I agree that an af lens is obviously going to be at least somewhat larger than a mf lens, but there has still been a surprising lack of miniaturization, especially amongst the japanese lenses, since the japanese are the masters of miniaturization. Even amongst manual focus lenses though(the zeiss lenses come to mind), one definitely gets the impression that they could be significantly smaller.
 
Modern primes, even AF primes, are not that much bigger and often lighter than comparable primes with comparable maximum apertures from the old days. But these days we want faster apertures and long zoom ranges and IS.

Zooms have become much smaller over time.
I owned a Canon FD 85-300 4.5 zoom in the 1980's that was a good lens by 1980's standard but truly a monster. I can slap my 70-200 2.8L IS on a 50D and get a similar focal length with a smaller, lighter MUCH higher optically quality lens. These are the good old days.
 
Pickett Wilson said:
Modern primes, even AF primes, are not that much bigger and often lighter than comparable primes with comparable maximum apertures from the old days. But these days we want faster apertures and long zoom ranges and IS.

Zooms have become much smaller over time.
I owned a Canon FD 85-300 4.5 zoom in the 1980's that was a good lens by 1980's standard but truly a monster. I can slap my 70-200 2.8L IS on a 50D and get a similar focal length with a smaller, lighter MUCH higher optically quality lens. These are the good old days.
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They are often lighter because of the increased use of plastic instead of metal, and I realize that beyond a certain aperture, lenses have to be a significantly larger diameter just because of the laws of physics, but this barrier seems to be around f/1.4. If you could make a tiny, tiny, tiny lens 50 years ago at f/3.5 or 2.8, where are those tiny, tiny, tiny f/1.8 lenses today? It seems to me that there is either an unwillingness to innovate in this direction, or the feeling that there isn't a market for innovating in this direction. As to zooms, it seems like most (again, but not all) quality zooms are still massive things, and the majority of smaller zooms are pretty lousy, either in terms of optical quality or build quality.
 
I think it depends from digital, economy and quality. Lenses have become better and faster so they are bigger, than economics have changed the way things are build, precision mechanic and human labor hes become more expensive while automation cheaper and I think that miniaturization requires more from the first two (total speculation here no real industrial knowledge). Plastic and modern metals too increase the size, they can be as strong as metal and lighter but must have a bigger volume. And last but not least digital requires telecentric design which accounts for even bigger specially on wide angles. With slr users bigger is not as a big deal as with rangefinders and as the lenses are lighter and higher quality it can be tolerated and even rangefinder users often forget about the size, why we have not sen discussion on how is possible than the new asph noctilux being aspheric and teorically better is not a lot bigger than the old and have the same filter size or why a 35mm biogon is bigger than an asph summicron?

P.S. I apologise for my bad English.
Cheers,
 
4 reasons

4 reasons

Merkin said:
Is it just me, or do the vast majority of lenses just keep getting bigger and bigger? I was at my local used camera store a couple weeks ago, and I spotted a number of old lenses that I had never seen in the flesh before, and I was astounded at the small size, particularly some of the older leica and nikon rangefinder lenses, but the same applies to SLR lenses. Few would disagree that modern lenses, on average, are optically superior to the majority of lenses from not that long ago, with advances in lens design, materials, speed (or better quality at larger apertures), and coatings. At the same time though, they just keep getting larger and larger! Of course, there are a few exceptions. Pentax has done a good job with their pancake primes, and a lot of the voigtlander lenses are quite small. There is no reason in my mind, however, why the vast majority of lenses couldn't be made significantly smaller. Do people like only being able to carry half the equipment in the same amount of space? Is it just another case of a misguided "Bigger is better" philosophy? If nikon could make a non-collapsible rangefinder lens 50 years ago that barely stuck out from the body more than a cubic inch, there is absolutely no excuse for the sheer bulk of modern lenses.
Click to expand...

Five reasons I mean:
1. Autofocus motors.
2. Plastic, it has to be thicker than metal
3. Sometimes, larger elements for better correction.
4. Uneducated consumers equate size with quality.
5. Weatherproofing
 
For Nikon and Canon, you have to cram into the lens IS or VR... I wonder too, I have an old Pentax-A 70-200/4 macro... but it is considerably smaller than a Canon 70-200/4 without IS. Is the autofocus mechanism that huge to make a lens at least 1/3 bigger? OR maybe because their different brands, the optics differ?
 
I'm not convinced that AF necessitates larger lenses. Look at Pentax's DA 40 limited lens. It's literally about the size of a body cap; the hood is almost as long as the lens.

I think the problem is just that size doesn't matter in the slr world. As you move to higher quality bodies, they get progressively bigger. I think most average consumers will tend to buy the most expensive (read biggest) body and a huge superzoom and feel contented that they've bought pro quality gear.

With a mindset like that, it makes no sense to try for miniaturization. And where it does happen, the lenses cannot compete in terms of price with normal lenses (see again the pentax ltd primes)

I think it's lucky that pentax is still interested in a niche market like the ltd primes, but I don't see them getting any competition when the public demands cheaper, faster, longer zooms.
 
i like small lenses. i like the fact you can get shallow dof in a small lens just as with a big one. the larger the film plane, however, the longer the focal length needs to be i think.
 
Ever try to sell a really small lens in a retail store?

Actual photographers are a minority compared to people that just want to buy the cool stuff they are supposed to have and be known to have. I hate to say it, bit size is a huge factor in these folks' decisions. I am also rather certain that autofocus is a poor to downright slanderous excuse for lens size today.

If you were a lens designer, and told your boss that it would be a challenge to fit in a component, and they said, "Good! We'll make a bump there and put a label on it!" What would you do? I have seen this in some really serious non-retail industries. It's crazy.

Somewhat embarrassing to be human sometimes.
 
You're right, and I don't understand it either. I'd venture a guess that it's easier and cheaper to design a large lens than a small one. As for the newer lenses being better, I've noticed the opposite effect. As I go backwards in time, gear wise, the quality of my photos goes up. You just have to pick out the exceptional glass from the merely very good. My Zeiss 75 2.8 on my very old Welta Weltur gives a more pleasing image than the Mamiya 7 I used to have, and my 1937 Tessar on the Super Ikonta 531A is also very sharp. The Isolette w/ the Solinar 75 3.5 blows both of these away in sharpness. The Xenotar 2.8 on the Rolleiflex is as good as any MF lens ever made, today or decades ago when it was new. All of these medium format lenses are tiny by the way. We won't even mention the old 50 Summi.
 
For the professional photographer or serious amateur, smaller=better.
For the rank and file consumer (who fulfills most of the sales), bigger=more professional looking=easier to recognize=better. The unwillingness stems simply from what the majority of the market wants. Heck, canon gets more attention just cos its top lenses are white and everyone associates a big white lens to the professionals shooting the football at the end of a pitch whom they associate with stunning images in the backpage. It all about the image, not the image u produce, but the image u project.
 
Less vignetting, more sharpness, at high speed, especially with wide angles = better but also = bigger. Hence the size of the new 21 + 24 Summiluxes. Huge next to my old 35/1.4 but vastly 'better' lenses if you want sharpness and even illumination.

With few exceptions (eg 1,5/50 C-Sonnar) the manufacturers have decided that there's no future in smaller fast lenses with compromised performance.

It would be interesting to persuade Leica to re-issue the 35/1.4 pre-aspheric. I'd be willing to guess that they would appeal 90% to collectors and ony 10% to photographers.

Tashi delek,

Roger
 
The 35 f2 pre asph is a great lens. I am not sure that I want the ASPH lenses with their greater size, lthough I do want the ASPH Summilux 50. While I might be sorry about the loss of half a stop, the new 50mm Summarit is fantastically compact, 15mm shorter than my Summicron from the '70s. Size is a crucial component of the attractiveness of the M Leica system. I saw a 75mm Summicron in the window of my local shop today and was stunned at the compactness of that compared with the Summicron 90. There are some compact lenses out there.
 
I always feel I'm driving a ferry boat with SLR, and in a sports car with my RFs. And I still can't see any difference in picture quality between my Olympus 35RC and my (small but I don't want to take it on a trip) Pentax SLR with a prime 35mm lens (same f stops [f 2.8]).
 
The number one steroid growth factor is speed. Just compare a Voigtländer 50 mm 2,5 with a Leica Noctilux. Nobody seems satisfied with anything less than aperture 2,8 today. 30 years ago we were glad we had a lens.
 
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